... a miscellaneous hodgepodge of various thoughts, loosely held together by the fact that they're all emanating from a single mind. A lighthearted look at the world, a great place to waste a moment or two of your life.

Monday, March 10, 2008

2 days left...

Only two days left to vote on my blog post poll (you'll have to go to my blog site to vote, can't do that from e-mail or a feed viewer). There's only been one vote at the time of my writing this.

I need to quit hanging things (clothes) on my bed (we have one of those beds with really tall corner posts, with rods connecting them on which you could put curtains or something). I realized last night that one set of clothes, which tends to be shadowed, looks like a grim reaper figure, with his two arms raised, but with a squirrel or a parrot on one of them. Weird. My wife, on the other hand, will tend to wake up and see the outline of a large man near the foot of the bed (different set of things hung up there). I wonder if that has anything to do with some of the strange dreams we have at times... I doubt it, as it's usually from whatever movie we've stayed up too late watching, or from other influences, but who knows.

We recently took a trip in our new (to us; technically it's not new, since it's used) 2006 Kia Sedona LX. It did very well, although we did have a "Malfunction Indicator Light" (aka "check engine light") on the way back - it was off today, but I ran it over to the local Kia place to have it checked out, and a PCM (Powertrain Control Module) upgrade was in order (no cost, warranty covered). The trip was to the Mentone Wedding Chapel for my brother's wedding (note to those who may be interested: I'd carried the GPSr, actually had the directions to the place in there, with a cache list for the area as well as for the trip, but due to timing - and being dressed up for the wedding - we decided not to cache, either to or from; I'll have to head out that way again sometime to find some of those caches, though!). Funny: the ring bearer, his three-year-old son, didn't want to come down the aisle at first (and they had the rings on the pillow); then he started walking down the aisle, then he ran and threw, from about 10 feet, the pillow with the rings at his dad (my brother) and the pastor.

Reminds me some of my wedding... I had the cutest 5-year-old in America as my ring bearer. Not kidding: it was my cousin (3rd cousin or something, the son of my mom's cousin) and he'd been entered into a photo contest and was officially voted "cutest kid in America 5 & under." They'd tied the real rings to his ring pillow. When it came time for the rings, he was nowhere to be found. He'd gone to sit with my aunt out in the audience, and she had to bring the pillow with the rings up. Then the pastor tried to untie the knot, but knotted it worse, and eventually had to pull his pocket knife out to cut the ring off the pillow (his comment at the time: "I usually don't pull my knife on a congregation, but...") - when my wife put it on my finger, it still had part of the string on it. Other things: the flower girl, my wife's little sister, decided to sit on the prayer bench (where we were supposed to kneel for prayer or communion or something, I forget; my wife may beat me when she reads this), and eventually my mother-in-law or someone had to go and remove her from the bench in order for us to be able to kneel there. Oh, and the pastor hadn't come to the rehearsal, and forgot part of the ceremony (where we take two candles and light one in the middle to symbolize unity) - we had to remind him about that - he was expecting us to go ahead and make our way back down the aisle.

Afterwards, we went back to her house so she could change and we could get our stuff, and then we headed out of town for a couple of days... and went through the drive-through at Arby's on the way out of town, me still in my suit, all the "just married" stuff still on the car... kind of like when our daughter was born, and I was working at Long John Silver's... on the way home from the hospital, in that 1977 Chevy Pickup I'd mentioned (borrowed at the time because it was cold and we didn't have antifreeze, only water, in the Toronado, which was parked in a garage and thus safe from the cold) with her in an infant seat in the middle of the truck's bench, we went through the drive-through at Long John Silver's - I ordered a large water and some napkins (just to be funny) and showed her off at the drive-through window. She's still show-offable, at least as pretty now as she was cute then, but I don't think she'd fit in an infant seat anymore.

Speaking of funny at a fast-food place, I once (at an Arby's) ordered partially solidified hydrogen oxide. (In case you, like the guy behind the counter, are filled with a blank stare, that's a fancy way of saying "ice water." Of course, if you're reading this blog, you're probably among those who would have come up with that way of saying it and don't need this parenthetical hint.) You might try that sometime if you're feeling mischievous (which, by the way, only has three syllables, not four).

Well, I think I ate too much Dinty Moore Beef Stew (one of my favorite food groups). Think I'll just lay back the reclining portion of the sofa and finish watching Deal or No Deal...

Oh, wait - before I go, I almost forgot to mention that apparently there are pharmaceuticals in your drinking water. An investigation by the Associated Press has revealed trace amounts of various prescription and non-prescription drugs in the water supply of communities all across the US. Go read the article for yourself. What do I think? I think this is probably more of a real problem - and definitely more of a man-made problem - than "human created global warming." One that actually might be worth us spending time and effort to try to minimize our impact on the planet (this definitely is affecting things, and definitely is of human influence on the world). From the article:

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe -- even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, the source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Yeah, we're doing bad things here. For example:

Pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life -- such as earthworms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Interesting, though: "in the laboratory" - um, how are they "testing" wildlife in the laboratory? Maybe they mean they're attempting to simulate the environment in which the zooplankton exist in the lab. Not really sure on that one. But they have noticed effects (not "affects" by the way - the pharmaceuticals are affecting wildlife by effecting the changes described) in wildlife (at least the article indicates they've noticed such).

Funny... the DoND (Deal or No Deal) girl only won $150. But it was a $10 case she sold for $150 - I wish I could make that kind of investment! If I had money to risk, I'd probably consider SiRF Technologies as a potential investment, but I don't have money to risk, unfortunately. Then again, I'm not a day-trader, or a stock analyst, a financial advisor, or even wealthy (by the world's standards - I have my wonderful wife & family, and my salvation, and friends, so what else could I want?), so I'd recommend not taking my advice and instead getting your own. But it does seem like they (SiRF) have fallen on hard times as far as their stock price is concerned, but I think they'll likely bounce back before too long (or perhaps be bought, which will also probably cause the share price to rise - again, I'm not an advisor, this is just speculation on my part).

Wow, look at all the keywords I've added to this blog post! Talk to you later...

6 comments:

Okay, I voted, but the poll was a wonderful example of how misleading a poll can be.

I don't necessarily like the shorter posts, but I find that I don't have time to read your longer posts most of the time. Isn't that awful? I can't patch together five minutes of peace to do it?

Actually, I surely could. It's just a matter of when I decide to visit blogs.

Now, for instance, I'm eating a [once-] frozen pizza and commenting. When the pizza is gone I'll have to stop computing.

I think that, if you split your posts up into one post per topic, I (and possibly others) would probably be able to read them all in a more efficient manner. I have been guilty of looking at the length of a post and thinking, "Golly! I don't have time to read this one right now."

OK, I voted, too. I did have to make two trips to your site to read all of this last blog, though. It's been crazy lately.

I read about the water thing and I'm thinking "Good grief! Just when I went back to tap water!", but then when I read on the article said that we're not safe with bottled water either. Let's just all drink soda then. Maybe the carbonization process kills off all the bad stuff. I dunno.

I don't watch Deal or No Deal. It gets on my nerves. I did watch My Dad is Better Than Your Dad. I was bummed that the firefighter dad didn't win.

Hey - I know you can't see it, but my word verification below is very similar to topato! :)

Sorry, I should have had a selection for, "I enjoy all the posts, but the short ones are easier to read because the long ones are too long."

Oh, and why the long posts? It's the rambling part, I think. And maybe the multiple topics give you more to comment on (but there are so few comments, I s'pose I should have figured that's not working, eh?). :)

Oh, yeah, Dean: how was the Pizza? And typing with one hand? And do you like the new posts (you'll have to read 'em to see)?

Christy, I don't think carbonization does anything to alleviate the pharmaceuticals in the source water... but it does make it fizzy!

Personally, I think I'm addicted to caramel coloring. I like dark carbonated beverages, which usually are made dark with caramel coloring. It's not caffeine - I can do caffeine free dark carbonated bev's. It's not the carbonation - otherwise ginger ale & sprite & Mountain Dew (hmm... haven't seen the aliens recently!) such would probably suffice, which they don't. Thus, I can only assume it must be the caramel coloring to which I'm addicted.

Christy, you should post a blog about Aspartame over on your blog, complete with claims, reference, and source material. That way we'll all have a head start as to researching it ourselves. At the moment I don't even know what to really look for in relation to Aspartame.